June 2006 Odd Wisconsin
According to the U.S. Senate's history site, the first and only father and son to serve in the Senate at the same time were Henry Dodge of Wisconsin and his son Augustus Caesar Dodge of Iowa. The elder Dodge represented Wisconsin in the Senate from 1848 to 1857. When he arrived in Washington, he joined his son, who was already...
read more.
Posted in Odd Lives on June 25, 2006
The Brewers once scored 22 runs in a single game (in Toronto, on Aug. 28, 1992), and they came close to matching that record a few weeks ago by trouncing the Cubs 16-2. But those are nothing compared to the 61-12 pummeling that the Beloit Olympians gave the Milwaukee Cream Citys back in '67 -- 1867, that is. Baseball was...
read more.
Posted in Curiosities on June 22, 2006
The desire to share the happiness found in their own particular faith brought many religious people to Wisconsin. The first was Fr. Rene Menard (1605-1661) who came here in 1661 after Iroquois attacks drove his small flock of Huron converts 1,000 miles west from the St. Lawrence Valley. Setting out from Lake Superior, Menard hiked overland across the Upper Penninsula...
read more.
Posted in Curiosities on June 19, 2006
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first AIDS diagnosis, a gruesome fact but one which, like every other, has a historical context. Epidemics have swept through human communities for about 10,000 years, and Wisconsin has had its share. European diseases probably reached Wisconsin before European explorers themselves. In the fifty years following Hernando de Soto's invasion of the lower...
read more.
Posted in Curiosities on June 4, 2006
Yesterday's Odd Wisconsin column in the Wisconsin State Journal highlighted the anniversary of a chance meeting in Beaver Dam out of which grew The Gideons International. More than a dozen readers immediately protested that the service group actually began in Boscobel, where a previous meeting of the founders is commemorated in a historical marker. Where did The Gideons really begin?...
read more.
Posted in Bizarre Events on June 1, 2006
|
